Contributions At Work
The RAND Corporation is committed to improving public policy and decisionmaking – around the corner, and around the world. To accomplish this, RAND often pioneers new knowledge, conducts independent and objective research activities, and disseminates findings broadly. Indeed, since 1996, RAND has leveraged the Internet to make all unclassified research and analysis available to the public free of charge (visit Reports & Bookstore for more information). RAND believes that access to knowledge empowers informed decision-making and contributes immeasurably to the public good.
Making decisions more rational is what RAND is all about. As James Q. Wilson remarked in an address at the Library of Congress commemorating RAND's 50th anniversary, RAND has brought about "by its own achievements and by the example it has set for others, a remarkable transformation in the way collective choices are shaped."
Within its first decade, RAND created both the foundation for America's space program and an array of essential analytic tools -- linear and dynamic programming, mathematical modeling and simulation, network theory, cost analysis -- that are now part of the common curriculum. RAND researchers made seminal contributions to digital computing and artificial intelligence and developed the concept of packet switching, which was to become a primary building block for the Internet.
By 1960, RAND was integrating these new tools into "systems analysis," a way of identifying, and often quantifying, the consequences of policy options that enables decisionmakers to see the whole picture. During the Cold War, RAND focused the power of systems analysis and a unique interdisciplinary approach on the country's fundamental national security priorities.
The skills that RAND honed in the national security arena were later applied to social policy issues of the Great Society. In the course of addressing complicated questions of health care and housing, RAND created entirely new approaches to conducting large social experiments -- approaches that provide insight into how individuals make decisions.
Over the past several decades, RAND has greatly enriched the repertoire of techniques for evaluating policies in health care, education, welfare, drug control, and the justice system. These analytic tools have helped RAND provide practical advice about how well programs are working and how efficiently the resources spent are furthering program goals.
Today, America confronts a host of challenges that will have to be addressed in the decades ahead -- shaping the future health care system, making appropriate investments in our children, revitalizing public education, and advancing international security in a volatile world, to name but a few. And, within the broader picture, ensuring that our nation's political system and the core institutions that support it will endure.
These challenges will cut across both the disciplines of the academic world and mandates of governmental departments. They entail complicated constellations of public and private activities. They involve questions not always amenable to straightforward quantitative analysis. Key information may be lacking; enormous uncertainty may surround the consequences of decisions. We can, however, be certain that how the nation resolves these issues will, in large measure, determine the kind of world our children and grandchildren will inherit.
RAND can help America chart its course into the new century. This website, articulates our vision of how -- with your support -- we can do it.
Make a gift or view recent research in the public interest supported by RAND, using discretionary funds made possible by the generosity of RAND's donors.
RAND-Initiated Research Agenda
Issues and topics being addressed by RAND-Initiated research agenda:
An Affordable and Caring Health Care System for the 21st Century
Shaping America's New International Agenda…
Training the Next Generation of Policy Analysts—The Pardee RAND Graduate School
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